How to Get a User Experience Design Internship Fast

How to get a user experience design internship is a big question for UX graduates every year. There are 6 great suggestions can be helpful on that.

For students, one of the most significant stages is the transition from student to workers. The internship represents a major first step as a professional user experience designer. Internships are a great opportunity to know the field and explore the great career potential in a very short time. But the employment requirement often scares away many new comers at the first step of applying for a user experience design internship.

We can usually read a UX intern job description posting like this: "More than 7 years of UX design expertise, good at interactive design, front-end web development ..."

These requirements are too harsh for interns under this kind of user experience job description. Graduates rarely have specific project experience on UX design, let alone the professional UX design experience over 7 years. But these are not completely invalid, or unrealistic requirements. At least, it can help to identify the people who are really want to learn what is user experience, and what makes a good UX design.

The high-quality user experience internship opportunity will take a great impact on the career for who want to be user experience designers in the future. This article will mainly concern 6 suggestions on how to get great user experience design internship opportunities without professional UX design experience.

1. Job Planning and Management

Before applying for a user experience design internship, you should consider what kind of the internship experience you want. UX intern working can be a great variation in different companies. In small companies or start-ups, you may get more direct access to products and customers, and assume more responsibilities. In larger organizations, there are possible to get more chances to cooperate with bigger team, get good guidance, and learn how to build an UX design on a larger scale.

2. UX Intern Resume & Portfolio

As a stepping stone for UX interns, resume and portfolio of the graduates are indispensable and playing a great significance on internship application. So before you are ready to apply for an internship, it’s important to make a basic preparation and create a compelling online resume and portfolio. The excellent resume and portfolio are the first step to promote the graduates successfully. The portfolio is not necessarily to be perfect, but it is the chance to make a great first impression for you on the recruiters to make the final decision. UX managers want to understand your thought process, impact, and contribution to projects. Also, keeping in mind when you plan to design a portfolio that packs a punch, UX managers typically look for evidence of culture fit, skills, and experience rather than focusing on fancy degrees, titles, and GPAs.

3. Basic UX Design Knowledge & Design Skills

But also please note that pure virtuosity on resume and portfolio will not always get you a good result. What you should focus on the basic UI/UX concepts and design skills. You should read at least one UI/UX design book, visit at least one design forum or blog, and use at least one prototype design tool.

4. Applying for UX Interns

After the complement of the first three steps, you can prepare to apply for the user experience design internship opportunities. The global large companies will provide internships every year. Such as Google's global recruitment, and the professional social networking platform, LinkedIn will also provide a large number of internship opportunities.

Some of the top digital product design companies:

IDEO, Frog design, Smart design, Design continuum

The large companies with a well-operated design department:

Apple, Google, Facebook, Linkedin

5. UX Intern Interviewing

Finally get to the interview stage. Regardless of whether you’re an experienced UX designers or just establishing yourself as a novice. It can be especially nerve-wracking when you take the interview. Interviewers are most often interested in learning from candidates about the journey of a project rather than the final product or outcome. They’ll ask you to explain your projects, motivations, and discuss what you learned along the way. There are usually no right or wrong answers, but you should always have a clear explanation of your process, what your impact was, and what you would change if you could go back and do it over again.

6. What Should You Do After Getting the Internship?

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

--Theodore Roosevelt

Congratulations! Got the offer finally! During the internship, you need to work hard to seize the job opportunities, learn as much as possible professional and office skills to lay a good foundation to become a good user experience designer. Fill in the vacancies without project experience, and learn more practical knowledge and learn to use prototyping tools or other design tools such as Mockplus, Sketch.

Conclusion

That’s all my 6 suggestion on how to apply for the user experience design internship. I hope this article could help you to get a great UX intern, and I’m very glad to see you to become a good user experience designer in the near future.

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